The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2), with an estimated population of 67,596,281 people in 2022. The capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom is London, whose wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. The cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, respectively. Other major cities include Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle and Leeds.
Inhabited continuously since the Neolithic, the lands making up the modern-day UK have remained ethnically and culturally diverse. In the transitional period from the Danelaw in the late 9th century to the Norman Conquest culminating in 1066, the modern British people began to shape up, followed by the establishment of parliamentarism in the mid-13th century in both England and Scotland.